Dear Friends,
I love to read novels. Every time I open a new book, I hope to be captured by the story. I love to be lost in a good story where I cannot wait to get back to the book and discover more about the characters or the things happening around them. However, I have a complaint, “Most books do not have great endings.” Most books reach a climax or peak about two-thirds of the way through the novel. The last sections of the novel wrap up the story and drift off for a while before simply ending. On rare occasions, I read a book that keeps me holding on to the very end and leaves me with a powerful punch.
Why are endings bad? E.M. Forster blames the author. In Aspects of the Novel, he writes, “In the losing battle that the plot fights with the characters, it often takes a cowardly revenge. Nearly all novels are feeble at the end. This is because the plot requires to be wound up. Why is this necessary? Why is there not a convention which allows a novelist to stop as soon as he feels muddled or bored? Alas, he has to round things off, and usually the characters go dead while he is at work, and our final impression of them is through deadness.”
Endings, whether of movies or plays or novels, are disappointing if they give us exactly what we expect or what we don’t want. Endings are bad if they close off all the storylines, or leave the characters dangling. People probably complain less when the ending is strange than when the ending is predictable.
In the lives of characters in a novel, no story actually ends. Everyone carries on, even when they can no longer be seen. Materially, the characters pass out of existence. There are no more pages. However, readers assume the characters continue to exist in some form. We do not think the characters in a novel die after the last page of the book. They live on in our imagination or someone’s imagination.
So, why all this reflection about endings? This is the end of the church year. Like a novel, we are bringing the story to an end. The new story begins in Advent. This Sunday we reflect on end times and next week we will celebrate Christ the King. How does this story end? Struggle changing to triumph. Just when you think all is lost, all is found. The secret is hanging on to the very end.
Jesus tells us today, “Before all this happens, however, they will seize and persecute you, they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons, and they will have you led before kings and governors because of my name.”
And how are we to respond? Jesus tells us, “It will lead to your giving testimony. Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand, for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.”
For some of us the end looks pretty bad, “You will even be handed over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends, and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name…”
But Jesus promises us that the end of our story is the same as the end of his story. We will hear that ending next week when we celebrate victory in what appears to be defeat. Jesus’ kingship happens on the cross.
Peace,
Fr. Damian